Music Monday: Keith Jarrett and Friends

I found some time this week to enjoy some music. Some of my listening was prompted by my buddy Bret Weber asking me about 1970s Keith Jarrett.

It all started with his interest in this 1972 concert in Molde, Norway:

Or perhaps it was his Hamburg the same year:

This prompted us to talk about Miles Davis’s Live-Evil from 1970 where Jarrett played on organ and electric piano. While I enjoy Live-Evil as much as any of Miles’s excursions into fusion, I really like the Cellar Door recordings on which some of Live-Evil is based. In 2005, Columbia released the entire Cellar Door Sessions and they’re worth exploring to hear Jarrett at his funky, bluesy, best. Perhaps some of this reflects Jarrett’s ease with drummer Jack DeJohnette. 

Thinking about bluesy Jarrett and DeJohnette nnudged me to listen to their recordings with Charles Lloyd on his iconic mid-60s album Dream Weaver (1966):

Or, better still, Jarrett’s 1972 album Expectations with his American Quartet’s recording  with Dewey Redman, Charlie Harden, and Paul Motian (and Sam Brown on guitar):

Just to show that I’m not just listening to Keith Jarrett while exploring late 1960s and early 1970s jazz, I also put on Joe Henderson’s Multiple (1973) which featured Larry Willis on keyboards and DeJohnette on drums. Multiple takes Miles Davis’s interest in rhythm and texture and injects with a massive quantity of funk. Willis and Jack DeJohnette are pretty wonderful on this potent album.